I would grately appreciate some help in understanding file permissions. The first one is the lower and uppercase 's' in: drwxr-sr-x 2 rland rland 4096 Jun 4 11:43 files drwx--S--- 2 rland rland 4096 Sep 27 2001 nsmail Then, some file permission strings have a 'b' (=blockdevice?) and a 'c' - what are these for ? Robert